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EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is adapted from the Forbes eBook,The Millennial Game Plan: Career And Money Secrets To Succeed In Today's World, by Laura Shin. If you'd like to learn more about how maximize your productivity, the title is available now for download at Apple (iBooks), Amazon, (Kindle) and Vook (Nook, etc.).

David Rock spends a lot of time thinking about how we can best use our mental energy.

As director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, he not only keeps up on all the related research but also interviews workers about how they use their minds on the job.

“One of the questions I ask people a lot is how much quality thinking time do they get today, and define quality thinking time as ‘you’re able to focus deeply and achieve what you set out to achieve in the time you expect,’” he says. “The number continues to decrease as I ask people. It’s not 20 or 10 or even five hours. For a lot of people it’s a couple hours a week if that. The downside of technology is that it’s getting harder and harder to focus.”

Part of the problem is that we are now bombarded with information. Two researchers from the University of San Diego, Roger Bohn and James Short, found that the amount of information—text, moving images, music and spreadsheet data—consumed per capita by Americans has increased 60% from 1980 to 2008—from 7.4 hours a day to 11.8. Shockingly, these figures exclude working hours.

While information is generally useful, we also need space from it for our own thinking.

Why? Concentrating on a thought isn't about how much you focus, but about "how you inhibit the wrong things from coming into focus," writes Rock.

So what is this magical skill you need to master in order to think clearly in our hyper-connected, information-glutted society?

The ability to say no.

Given that we have a finite amount of time and energy, learning when to say no will help you spend the maximal amount of both of these precious resources on activities that will help you get ahead. It will help you block out everyday distractions, keep you on track to reach your real goals, and help you develop the skills most important for your work.

Saying no is useful in all kinds of circumstances. Try it out in these situations:

Not thinking during seemingly inconsequential periods.

Take, for instance, how you spend your commute. Many of us find that time to be a prime candidate for multitasking. Why not squeeze a podcast in, or write a few emails? But Rock says that rest is important to fuel our creativity and suggests that you could also just take in the scenery.